I should post this before I go to bed. Katie died yesterday. I don't think I ever mentioned it here, but in mid-January we found out that she had: a cancerous tumor on her shoulder, lung cancer, and fairly severe anemia. Her health had been steadily declining since then, though she out-lived the doctors' predictions by about a month. I gave her iron-heavy medicine everyday, since no one else could do it (my grandparents aren't that good when it comes to administering medicine to animals).

At around 4:30 yesterday, I heard vomiting sounds coming from the other room. I didn't think it was anything too bad, as she's been throwing up her food for the past few days (obviously, we knew that that was a sign she wasn't going to make it much longer). Grandpa had gone to meet some clients, so grandma and I were by ourselves. The gagging sounds persisted, and when grandma came downstairs, she called me into the other room. She was really scared and on the brink of tears as she asked me if I thought that Katie, who was now laying quite still, was alive. I walked over and kneeled down, trying to check her heartbeat. Katie suddenly started gagging again, but this time nothing was coming up. I knew it was almost over and that there was nothing we could do, so I just massaged her legs as her breaths became less and less frequent and, finally, stopped.

We'd been planning on taking her into the hospital to put her down this morning. At least she died in a comfortable setting, even if it probably wasn't a very comfortable death. And at least grandma's handling this much better than she did Stormy's death, since she's had months to prepare herself for it.

Goodbye, Katie. You made many people smile.

Things really haven't been too bad. Picaresque is a gorgeous album. Simply gorgeous. I really love it, in its entirety.

I also enjoyed the American version of The Office. Not nearly as good as the original, of course, but I don't think it'd be possible to surpass the original. Steve did a fine job, though. He made the character different, which is good if they expect the show to stand on its own. I look forward to seeing the future episodes with original scripts.